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ADDRESS. 



<^ull»jCft: 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



For Fel)i-iTai'y SS, 1S6T 



B Y 



Col. J. C. PICKETT. 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN T. BURCH. 

1867. 



Washington, March 7, 1807. 
Dear Sir : 

We have the honor, in behalf of the Association of the Oldest 
Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, to request that you will furnish us 
with a coi^y of your interesting and patriotic address, delivered before the 
Society on the 22d ultimo, for publication. 

With great respect. 

We are your obedient servants, 

JOHN B. BLAKE, 

A. Mcdonald davis, 

JOHN CAEEOLL BRENT, 

Commitke of Arrantjevmits. 
CoL, J, C, Pickett, 

Present. 



Washington, March 8, 1867. 
Gentlemen : 

I have received your note of yesterday, in which you request 
me to furnish, for publication, a copy of the Address delivered before the 
Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, on the 
22d ultimo. In comjiliance with your request, I inclose herewith a copy of 
the Address. 

With the highest respect and regard. 

Your obedient servant, 

J. C. PICKETT. 
Dr. John B. Blake, 
Dr. a. McD. Davis, 
John Carroll Brent, Esq., 

Committee of Arrangements. 



ADDRESS. 



Fellow-Citizens : — 

It is a very natural, and not either an illiberal or an idle 
curiosity, but one inlierent apparently in the minds of indi- 
viduals and of communities, to endeavor to ascertain the 
origin^ pedigree, and important actions of illustrious men. 
Among such men, General George Washington occupies a 
conspicuous place, not only in his own country, but in all 
the countries of Christendom, and beyond. During the last 
eighty years, inquiries and researches have been made, and 
not unsuccessfully, respecting the Washington family ; and 
it is a little singular that these researches were commenced 
in England and by a British subject. In the year 1Y92, a 
letter was addressed to General Washington, by Sir Isaac 
Heard, in London, who held the heraldic office of Garter 
King-at-Arms, desiring information relating to the Wash- 
ington family. This the General gave, although it did not 
amount to much, he confessing that it was a subject to 
which he "had paid very little attention," notwithstanding 
the lustre he had recently shed upon that family, which had 
been a most respectable one for five or six centuries ; of the 
class called gentry in England. In this country, thanks to 
our institutions, we have but one class — the people. 

It appears that the founder of the Washington family, 
the ancestor of all of that name in America at least, was 
William de Hertburn, who lived in the 12th century. He 
acquired by purchase, in 1183, the manor and village of 
Wessyngton, in the diocese of Durham. Wessyngton was, 
it may be supposed, its original name. William was then 



6 

a Norman and not an Englisli name, and this may favor 
the hypothesis, that his ancestor came into England with 
the Conqueror, in 1066. Hertburn dropped his own name, 
and assumed that of William De Wossyngton. Wessyng- 
ton is said to signify smiling ivater. Surnames were then 
rare or unknown, as they now exist, and the owners and 
lords of manors usually took that of the manor. The seigni- 
orial and proprietary prefix de was droj)ped, and Wes- 
syngton finally became Washington ; the process of trans- 
mutation being about this : De Wessyngton, Wessyngton, 
Wessington, Weshington, Wassington, Waashington, 
Washington. It has been stationary in this last form some 
hundreds of years, which will be retained as long, probably, 
as the name is pronounced among men, and that will be as 
long as any name of man is pronounced, we may suppose. 
This final change of the name was made, perhaps, not less 
than three hundred years ago, as the Washingtons have 
long been well known in England, and some of them have 
been very distinguished men. Sir Henry Washington 
achieved an honorable military reputation, fighting on the 
side of King Charles against the Parliament. In the year 
1538, the manor of Sulgrave was granted to Lawrence 
Washington, of Gray's Inn, London. His grandson, Sir 
John, had many children, and among them John and Law- 
rence, the first having been knighted by James the First. 
These two brothers emigrated to this country about the year 
1659, the cause of their emigration being, Mr. Everett says, 
dissatisfaction with Cromwell's government. They came to 
Virginia, and settled in the county of Westmoreland, pur- 
chasing extensive landed estates ; and some of the land 
they purchased is yet owned by their descendants. General 
Washington was the great-grandson of the immigrant John. 
The immigrant Lawrence had numerous descendants, some 
of them distinguished men. Col. William Washington, 
so celebrated as a cavalry ofiicer in the war of the Ke volu- 
tion, was one of them. Lund Washington, the General's 
agent, in whom he had unbounded confidence, was another ; 
also Col. John Washington, distinguished as an artillery 



officer in the war with Mexico, 1846-47. Peter G. Wash- 
ington, Esq., a member of our Society, is also a lineal de- 
scendant of the first Lawrence. 

This brief statement is enough for a very brief Address, 
and is sufficient to give a general idea of General Washing- 
ton's family. What I have stated is, I believe, accurate. 
I have not given any loose and unsupported conjectures, 
nothing vaguely traditional, and nothing legendary and 
unauthentic. Errors have been committed by Gen. Wash- 
ington's ablest biographers. Mr. Sparks says that the only 
evidence of consanguinity between the first John and the 
first Lawrence was the name — a strange mistake for that 
industrious and conscientious writer to have committed. 
Mr. Irving calls the first Lawrence, Andreiu — a very unac- 
countable misnomer, but a mere oversight, and of but little 
importance. It may be inferred, from all the genealogical 
researches, that in this country, at least, every genuine and 
bona fide Washington has for his ancestor William de Hert- 
burn, and is of the blood of the Father of his Country. This 
is the result, as it has been laboriously and patiently worked 
out by heralds, historians and antiquaries. Schroeder's 
"Life and Times of Washington" being the latest work of 
the kind, is, perhaps, with respect to the early history of 
the Washington family, the most reliable. 

General Washington was born in Westmoreland county, 
Virginia, February 22, 1732. His father was Augustine, 
son of Lawrence, and grandson of the first John. His 
mother was Mary Ball, a daughter of a most respectable 
Virginia family. She was a lady of great merit, of many 
virtues, and of superior good sense. She did not marry a 
second time, and by her tact, her vigilance and her pru- 
dence, supplied admirably the place of father to her son. 
It was at one time settled that young George should enter 
the British navy as a midshipman, under the auspices of 
Admiral Vernon, who was the friend of his oldest brother, 
Lawrence — his father's son by his first wife, who had served 
under the Admiral and General Wentworth at Carthagena, 
in South America — but his mother opposed the project, and 



8 

it was abandoned. It is needless to speculate much ujDOn 
the dispositions of Providence, about which it is impossible 
to know anything without a revelation, and about which it 
is easy to imagine everything ; but still I somewhat per- 
suade myself that she had been made an instrument for re- 
serving her son for a much higher destiny — for the achieve- 
ment of great actions that were to unite his name indissolu- 
bly with the independence and greatness of his country ; — 
not that I assume, however, that without him its independ- 
ence could not have been achieved. I believe it could have 
been, and if not in 1781, in less than forty years afterwards. 
It will not be doing injustice though to the eminent, devoted 
and patriotic men of whom he was the associate and co- 
worker in the great cause, to say, that he was first in the 
cabinet, first in the field, and first in the confidence of the 
public. — I am not now imitating the famous sentence, not 
by me to be imitated, "First in war, first in peace, and first 
in the hearts of his fellow-citizens." 

Under the superintendence of his wise, excellent and 
afiectionate mother, Washington received a sound, plain 
English education, and no more, — the one best adapted, it 
may be, for those who are born to be great actors and 
achievers on the world's wide theatre. Very few great 
scholars have been great warriors, great statesmen, or great 
sovereigns. It may be because they prefer academic shades 
and scientific pursuits to all the glories of the Senate, of the 
forum, or of the '^tented field," and in this they may have 
been wise. It is pleasant to recollect that in his youth, 
Washington essayed poetry, as well as prose, though to the 
first he gave but little of his time, or thoughts probably. 
He had a greater work before him than "to build the lofty 
rhyme," which was to deliver his country from British 
tyranny, and with his glorious and never-to-be-forgotten 
coadjutors, to lay the foundations of a great empire. 

In 1752, Washington was sent by the Governor of Vir- 
ginia (Dinwiddle), as commissioner to the commander of the 
French troops that had penetrated the British territory from 
Canada, being instructed to remonstrate against the pro- 



9 

ceeding, and to gather all the information he could. This 
duty he performed in a very satisfactory manner. He found 
a French officer at a post fifteen miles from Lake Erie, who 
treated him courteously, but gave him no clue to the inten- 
tions of his chief, in Canada ; refused to retire with his 
troops^ saying that it was not his business to expound or to 
discuss treaties, but to obey the orders of his superior, the 
Marquis Du Quesne. — It required forty-one days of labori- 
ous traveling for Washington to reach a point about 560 
miles from "Williamsburg, Va. ; a point that might now bo 
reached in two days, such are the present facilities for trav- 
eling. 

In 1754, Washington was despatched, with the rank of 
Colonel, to the western frontier, witli a few hundred men, 
to repel any attempt of the French to penetrate into Vir- 
ginia. He had just troops enough to make a show of war 
and to provoke it, but not enough to insure success. This 
expedition resulted in the battle of the Great Meadows, and 
the capitulation of Fort Necessity, which was more properly 
a convention ; but the historians and biographers started 
with the wrong word, and it is now too late to displace it 
for the proper one. It is a capitulation Avhen an army sur- 
renders and becomes prisoners of war — a convention, when 
there is no surrender and no prisoners. Instead of becom- 
ing prisoners, Washington's soldiers left the fort with all 
the honors of war, and all the stores, except what they 
abandoned for want of means of transporting them. The 
surrender of the French General Dupont and his army to 
the Spaniards, in 1808, Avas a capitulation ; Marshal Ju- 
not's agreement to evacuate Portugal, in the same year, 
with all his force, was a convention, there being no priso- 
ners. 

Washington acquired much experience of military mat- 
ters in these expeditions, and came to be regarded as the 
first military man in the province, which he undoubtedly 
was. He soon joined the army commanded by General 
Braddock, and was present at his defeat near Fort Duquesne 
(Pittsburg.) He gave the General good advice, which was 
2 



10 

disregarded. Had it been followed a victory would have 
been won instead of a disastrous defeat being sustained. 
Braddock was brave, and -a good officer, but vain, self-con- 
fident, and inaccessible to good counsel, particularly when 
the counsellor was a provincial— a hucJcsJcin, as he regarded 
Washington. 

Washington was soon appointed commander-in-chief of 
the Virginia forces, and commanded an expedition that was 
sent to the West, but being merely for defensive purposes, 
no battles were fought and no laurels gained. In his twenty- 
fourth year he accompanied General Forbes, who was sent 
to capture Fort Duquesne, a duty that was performed with 
very little loss — and hostilities being apparently at an end, 
he returned to Virginia, resigned his military commission, 
and dedicated himself to the pursuits of private life. In 
1758 he married the widow Custis. She was young, beau- 
tiful and attractive, and the mistress of what was then a 
very large fortune, but in these extraordinary times, not 
large at all, when wealth is counted, not by millions only, 
but by tens and scores of millions. It is to be hoped that 
all this vast opulence rests upon a solid foundation, but I 
am sometimes a little apprehensive that there is a flaw 
somewhere, and that a portion of it may, at some not very 
distant day^ be dispersed into thin air. May this not hap- 
pen ! 

Washington now resided on his estate of Mount Vernon, 
to the cultivation of which he gave the most assiduous at- 
tention, yet serving frec[uently as a member of the House 
of Burgesses, and also as a vestryman of his parish. What- 
ever he undertook to perform he performed always promptly, 
punctually and well — a small office as well as a great one. 
In whatever situation he might be placed, he was always 
found to be equal to it. If deficient in the requisite know- 
ledge at the start, which he rarely was, if ever, he soon 
acquired it, and soon came to know more than almost any 
other person. So it was in the Burgesses, and so it was 
everywhere. He must have learned with ease, or he could 
not have learned so much. His mode of life at Mount Ver- 



11 

non was the happiest known to man, probably, and lie 
made the best and the most of it. He had much intercourse 
with liis neighbors and friends, entertained many visitors, 
and entertained them hospitably, but without parade or 
ostentation. As a legislator, he was remarkable for his 
information and for his solid judgment, which commanded 
the respect and esteem of his co-legislators. Flis political 
bias was by no means of a strong Anglican tendency. His 
opinions, pursuits and associations prepared him to be natu- 
rally and inevitably, when time came for taking sides, hos- 
tile to the British policy, which was, in a few words, to 
conjure out of the provincial treasuries every penny that 
could be conjured, by the ministerial magicians, at London, 
and they wielded the magic wand witli no little dexterity. 
But, after all, they were but short-sighted conjurers, as 
they tlicmselves lived to see. They had the golden goose, 
but they could not be satisfied with a golden egg every day, 
so they put all to hazard and lost all. 

But Washington, whilst giving himself up to agricul- 
ture^ and to the cultivation of the amenities of social life, 
was, notwithstanding, a constant and a vigilant observer of 
everything of public concernment. He was always ready 
to accept any charge or to perform any duty that might be 
assigned him, if calculated to promote the public welfare. 
This useful and improving kind of life he pursued many 
years, and came thus to bo, whilst yet a young man, tlie 
most capable, efficient and influential person in all the tliir- 
teen provinces. And he is an example of the kind of man 
that may be produced by a great share of good sense and 
prudence, united with untiring industry, watchful vigilance 
and exalted patriotism. 

In the year 17fiO, the relations between tlie British jiro- 
vinces and the Home Grovernment were of a very delicate 
character, and nothing but the most skilful handling could 
effect a peaceable solution of the various questions and dif- 
ficulties pending. These difliculties increased, and the 
crisis became difiicult and ominous. Two conventions met 
in Virginia, and Washington was a member of both. He 



12 

and CxGorge Mason framed jointly a set of resolutions, re- 
markable as being a clear and luminous exposition of the 
points at issue between tlie mother country and the pro- 
vinces. They were the work of both, Mason being the 
draughtsman, without doubt. 

Washington was now fairly arrayed in opposition to the 
British pretensions, and was elected a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress with Patrick Henry and three others, 
whose names are well known in American history for their 
patriotic labors. In Congress his ability and firmness soon 
became manifest, though little given to making speeches, 
for which he seemed to have an aversion. He worked with 
the head and with the hand ; the tongue work he left to 
able and eloquent men, who were more at home than he in 
that specialty. Here it was that Patrick Henry made that 
memorable reply to the question : Who is the greatest man 
in Congress ? He answered : "^'If you speak of eloquence, 
Mr. Eutledge, of South Carolina, is by far the greatest 
orator, but if you speak of solid information and sound 
judgment. Colonel Washington is unquestionably the great- 
est." 

In 1775, the second Congress assembled, of which Wash- 
ington was a member. By this body he was unanimously 
chosen commander-in-chief of the Continental army, and it 
was a little remarkable that of all the members none were 
more earnest in their support of him than those from New 
England. Happy era that! Sectional differences and 
geographical lines had not yet made us a divided, jealous, 
and discontented people. Patriotism and devotedness to 
the country's interest were not then determined by degrees 
of latitude and longitude. Truly then, there was no North, 
no South, but a united population, animated by one thought, 
one soul, one ambition, one interest, one object. On his 
election, Washington gave notice that he did not accept the 
high ofiice conferred on him for its emoluments,, and that 
lie would receive no compensation for his services beyond 
his expenses, and he kept his word. He was certainly the 
first commander-in-chief of armies in modern times, I sup- 



13 

pose, who accepted the command, stipulating similar condi- 
tions. He rendered an account, finally, of his expenses, 
kept with his own liand, and in an exact and circumstan- 
tial manner. And surely his expenses amounted to a very 
moderate sum, considering his eminent position, and that 
he was about seven or eight years in the public service. 
But he practiced the same judicious economy when com- 
manding the whole military force of the country, even 
when quasi-dictator, that he practiced in his own private 
aifairs. He did not forget^ in all his greatness, when exer- 
cising supreme authority, how the money he expended was 
raised — by severely taxing a people then ill-able to bear 
taxation. They paid — or if sometimes recalcitrant, it was 
because of their poverty, not of their will. 

Greneral Washington soon found, if he did not know it 
from the beginning, that he had accepted an office, of all 
others, the most difhcult to discharge effectively, or to dis- 
charge satisfactorily, and, under the circumstances, one 
that v/as inconceivably embarrassing. He was commander- 
in-chief, but where were his armies ? They had to be 
formed, and when and where there was a scarcity, if not 
absence, of almost all the elements essential to the organi- 
zation of armies. There were men, but not enough of them ; 
they were, in general, without military experience, and 
their previous habits of life were not favorable to the con- 
struction of what the Duke of Wellington called a "perfect 
machine," meaning a perfectly disciplined army, as his 
was, he said, that he marched, in 1814, from Spain into 
France. They were brave and j^atriotic, but averse to long 
periods of service. Short enlistments Avere then, and have 
since ever been, the weak point of our military system. Of 
this General Washington complained, often enough and 
emphatically enough, to have produced a change for the 
better, but he could not accomplish much. The difficulty 
was not Avith the Congress^ but was to be found in the ideas, 
in the habits and in the pursuits of the people. Not only 
were soldiers wanting, but arms were wanting, munitions 
of war, clothing, and last, though not least, that indispen- 



14 

sable nerf de la guerre — money. There was no quarter- 
master department, no commissariat, no medical staff — 
none that really deserved these names. Never before, per- 
haps, did any nation, in modern times, rush into a war 
with a powerful adversary, oppressed with so copious a 
"negative catalogue," as Dr. Johnson called the absence 
of all things needful. Had the want of all these things 
been only temporary and removable, it had been well. But 
it was not so. It existed, chronically, from the beginning 
of the war to the end of it, nor could "Washington, with all 
his power, his influence, his strong will, his energy, and 
his heart-stirring appeals ever succeed in constructing a 
perfect machine, in the sense of the "Iron Duke," Why 
was this so ? Were the people pusillanimous or disaifected, 
or indifferent ? No ; not by any means, as a rule. There 
were disloyalists, but not enough to vitiate the whole loaf — 
the whole body popular and politic. The secret, if it were 
a secret, was, that the people were generally poor, and, 
though brave and patriotic, did not possess the military in- 
stincts ascribed to the French. Then the government, the 
form of it I mean, was not one of the best for carrying on a 
war. It existed but by the consent of thirteen distinct 
provincial governments ; had but little power, little consid- 
eration, and no prestige. Besides, the population was 
small, and scattered over a vast extent of countr3\ The 
great distance between States and cities, the want of roads, 
which could scarcely be said to exist during the war, and 
long afterwards, were insurmountable obstacles in the way 
of collecting supplies and transporting them to the points 
where they were needed, and of concentrating troops rapidly. 
Had they been no better during the late war the struggle 
might have lasted twenty years. For the thirteen colonies, 
without a central government, without strength excejjt in 
opinion, without armies, and without money, or with but 
little of it, to throw down the gauntlet to a powerful na- 
tion, the mistress of the seas, the ravager of India, and the 
terror of half the world, was an act of patriotic spirit and 
daring but seldom paralleled. 



i) 

To give, ill a brief address, a sketch that miglit be in 
some degree satisfactory, of the revolutionary war, is sim- 
ply impossible. Nor is it necessary. You are all familiar, 
more or less, with the principal events, the strategic plans 
and combinations, the successes, the failures, and the part 
borne in it by General Washington. He was the soul 
of everything, animated everything, and looked to almost 
everything. He fought many battles — was sometimes vic- 
torious and sometimes defeated, but never so utterly that 
defeat became disaster, great enough to shake his resolution, 
to drive him into despondency, or make him bate a jot of 
heart or hope. Such was the confidence universally reposed 
in him that Congress invested him with quasi-dictatorial 
powers for a limited term, although there was a strong 
prejudice in the minds of the people against military dicta- 
tors, as was right ; but they were willing to trust him, the 
only military man they would have trusted so far, though 
not the only one worthy of trust, by many. Never surely 
did a dictator act less dictatorially tlian he. With infinite 
reluctance did he do anything, or order anything to be 
done, for which there was not law, or overwhelming neces- 
sity, or palpable expediency. He neither abused his pow- 
ers nor suftered others to act tyrannically and oppressively 
in his name. The great prerogative and protective writ of 
Habeas Corj)us has been in existence almost two hundred 
years, and was the law of the land when the Continental 
Congress suspended it, if it was suspended ; and when 
General Washington might have filled the prisons with 
suspects — suspected of disloyalty and of sympathizing with 
the royalists. There were more than enough of these, and 
multitudinous arrests might have been made with colorable 
cause — yet few were made. There was no persecution, no 
oppression, because the supreme power was in the hands of 
a just and law-reverencing man. And thus General Wash- 
ington deserved as much laudation for what ho did not do 
as for what he did. With him the liberty of the citizen 
was as inviolate when he was commanding thirty or forty 
thousand soldiers, whose duty it was to execute his orders 



16 

implicitly, be thoy just or unjust, as it was when civil cliief 
of the country, — it was his duty to protect every citizen in 
his rights. We read of many dictators, but of none soun- 
dictatorial as this. When he laid down the dictatorship, 
he felt not like a man giving up power and authority, but 
as one relieved from an onerous and disagreeable responsi- 
bility. 

Though omitting any remarks about Gen. Washington's 
plans and campaigns and battles during the war, I cannot 
forbear saying a few words about Valley Forge, — words 
familiar to all your ears. None of you, I imagine, how- 
ever extensive your military or historic reading may have 
been, have met with anything more sickening and heart- 
rending than the details of the sufferings of Gen. Wash- 
ington's army at that encampment, during the winter of 
1777-78. I might except projoerly, perhaps, the retreat of 
the French from Moscow in the winter of 1812, when the 
freezing fugitives used the bodies of their dead comrades for 
fuel to keep up their camp fires ; nor did they do this from 
insensibility or from brutality, but from extremity of suffer- 
ing. The ten thousand Greeks, in the famous Anabasis of 
Xenophon, from Persia through Armenia to the Black Sea, 
suffered much ; not as rauch^ though, as the French did, 
nor as much as Washington's army at Valley Forge, where 
there was the most unheard-of destitution— want of every- 
thing that could be regarded as necessary to a soldier's 
comfort — his existence almost. — In my youth I. conversed 
frequently with an old soldier who passed that winter at the 
Forge, and when through his narrative, I said I could not 
see hoAV they endured so much, and rather wondered that 
the troops had not broken up and dispersed — not deserting — 
until better times. He said that what prevented them from 
doing so was the authority and influence of Washington, 
and the cause in which they were engaged ; and that they 
would have suffered still more for that cause. But notwith- 
standing their terrible sufferings the troops were not demor- 
alized, and as a rule were faithful to their engagements. 
Here we see what a good cause can do. It inspires the 



17 

soiil^ strengtliens the arm, fortifies the heart, and enables a 
patriot .soldier to bear more hardship than the human sys- 
tem was constructed to bear. Faithful and glorious soldiers ! 
They suftered much, but they had their reward. They 
livcd^the most of them — to see themselves and their coun- 
try free, and those who fell, found a reward surpassing far 
in value all that human justice and human gratitude can 
bestow. 

In 1781, Cornwallis was captured with Ids army at York- 
town, and with this brilliant finale closed the war. The 
campaign which led to this crowning success, planned by 
Washington and Lafayette and Counts Kochambeau and De 
Grasse, was as ^admirably conducted as it was admirably 
planned. History does not mention, I believe, any military 
event brought about by superior strategic ability, or finally 
achieved in a more heroic manner. Peace followed the cap- 
ture ; and here I must quote four lines from a British poet. 
Pr. Darwin. He sings like an American patriot. 

"With patriot speed the quick contagion ran, 
Hill lighted hill and man electrized man ; 
Her heroes slain, awhile Columbia mourn' d, 
And crown'd with laurels, Liberty return'd." 

The independence of the thirteen American colonies was 
acknowledged by George the Third with a tolerably good 
grace, seeing that he was an obstinate and impracticable 
man. He said to Mr. Adams, who was the first American 
Minister sent to the Court of St. James, that he was the 
last to consent to the dismemberment of the British empire, 
but that he would be the first faithfully to observe the treaty 
of peace. 

General Washington having lived to see the accomplish- 
ment of, and in a great measure to accomplish, that which 
had induced him to take up arms, resigned his commission 
and retired to Mount Vernon, which he had visited but once 
in six or seven years. Having turned his weapons of war 
into agricultural implements, he resumed with much alac- 
rity his former civil pursuits. He had had much experience 
3 



18 

of war, but it was not a profession that he had now in his 
mature years any predilection for, althougli in his youtli, 
when he first heard the whistling of hostile bullets, he had 
said that it was music to his ear. Being asked, after he 
had heard a good deal of that music, if he had said so, he 
replied that if he had it was when he was young, — thus 
admitting and retracting, apparently. 

At Mount Vernon, Washington led the same quiet, happy 
and industrious life he had led in former times. There he 
resided, having reached the age of fifty, — an age beyond 
the age of adventure and romance, but young enough for 
enjoyment of life and for its active j)ursuits. His occupa- 
tions were, superintending his farms, corresi^onding with 
his army friends, receiving visits and dispensing a liberal 
hospitality ; enjoying, as a fine poet sings, — 

"The mild majesty of private life, 
Where honor's hands effuse unenvied treasures, 
And the snowy wings of innocence and peace 
Protect the scene." 

In 1787 he w^as a member of the Convention which met 
to form a Constitution for "the people of the United States." 
It was formed, and was not long afterwards amended, and 
may again be ; for although, perhaps, the best document of 
the kind then ever conceived by the mind and heart of man, 
yet it is not perfect, and being the work of fallible men, 
may never be ; still, although the framers of it were fallible 
as being human and finite beings, they were perfect in 
patriotism, in political integrity, and in good intentions. — 
He was elected first President of the United States, and hav- 
ing served the term of four years, was re-elected without 
opposition, and could have been a third time, but this he per- 
emptorily declined ; thus giving an example seldom given 
by men in exalted stations, of retiring voluntarily from 
public life, which he did partly because he was tired of it^ 
and partly to give an example to his successors of being 
satisfied with two terms ; and so cogent were his reasons for 
this,, and such the force and influence of his opinions, that 



19 

no other President, if he desired a third term, has ever ex- 
pressed the wish to have it. And so the example of the 
first President has been, thus far, as much respected as 
though it were a provision of the Constitution, as it should 
be, or better still, one term only for one man during his 
whole life. Could Washington have seen the shadows of 
coming events, I have no doubt he would have declined a 
second term. 

For some time after the close of the war, it was considered 
not to be bad taste in England to villify Gen. Washington. 
Among his revilers was a lady possessing considerable poet- 
ical powers, which she employed on a work that she called 
a Monody on the Death of 3Iajor Andre, who was hung in 
the year 1*780 as a spy, as every one knows, he being an 
accomplice and coadjutor of the traitor Arnold. The worst 
man escaped, the better was punished. I read the poem 
fifty or sixty years ago, and recollect a few of the lines. I 
quote them : 

"For infamy with livid hand shall shed 
Eternal mildews o'er his ruthless head." 

"Cowards only know 
Persisting vengeance o'er a fall'n foe." 

The ''ruthless hand" was Washington's. He was the 
"coward" too; Andre the "fall'n foe." — Grave English 
historians have represented the execution of Andre to be a 
foul murder. But this venom and virulence soon wore 
themselves out, and the poets of the Billingsgate school 
rested from their labors, which soon ceasing to pay, they 
ceased to sing. That pure, higli-minded, honorable and 
chivalrous man, Lafayette, came in for a sliare of the vitu- 
peration heaped upon General Washington's head. This 
was because he was a Frenchman, which was a very good 
English reason in that day for any amount of villification. 
This is all changed, and was changed long ago. No one 
now speaks in England, even, but with respect of those two 
illustrious men, and many venerate their memories and 
eulogize them. 



20 

It is known to everybody that Gen. Washington selected 
the site of this city, under an act of Congress passed 1790, 
and that he superintended' the surveying of it and laying it 
out. This duty he performed as he performed all others — 
punctually and conscientiously. One of our memberS; Mr. 
Wells, was of the surveying party acting under the orders 
of the General. This city has long enjoyed the sobriquet of 
the ''city of magnificent distances." Since these distances 
have been filling up rapidly within the last five or six 
years, I have not often heard the sobriquet. It has been 
objected to, the plan of the city, that the avenues and streets 
are too wide, thus making it very expensive to pave them. 
They seem wide now, but will not be two wide a quarter of 
a century lience. They are the better for their width, thus 
promoting the circulation of the air, and contributing to 
the healthfulness of the city ; and the money expended in 
paving is really and effectively an expenditure for sanitary 
purposes and precautions. Edmund Burke said long ago, 
that the squares and open places of London were its lungs ; 
a truth with which all Londoners are conversant, and there 
they only regret that the streets are not wider than they 
are. In all great cities they are too narrow, as they well 
know in all the old capitals of Europe, and as they begin to 
find out in New York and some other of our cities. 

In his final retirement to Mount Vernon, General Wash- 
ington applied himself sedulously and con amore to agricul- 
tural avocations. He aimed at imj)roving the agriculture 
of his native State, which then much needed improvement. 
In those days of dull routine, there was no deep plough- 
ing with patent ploughs, no systematic rotation of crops. 
Chemistry had not then given a helping hand to the agri- 
culturist ; it was but in its infancy itself. There were then 
no Liebigs and other chemico-agricultural writers and ex- 
perimenters. There were then no reaping and mowing 
machines, and indeed scarcely one of the now numerous 
appliances and auxiliaries to mere human and horse and ox 
labor. Washington corresponded freely with persons en- 
gaged, like himself, in ameliorating the art of cultivating 



21 

the soil. Among his correspondents were Artlmr Young 
and Sir John Sinclair, enlightened and public spirited Eng- 
lishmen engaged in endeavoring, like him, to make two 
blades of grass grow where but one blade grew before. 

As General Washington had ever led a temperate, pru- 
dent and active life, it might have been rationally supposed 
that he would have attained to an advanced age, as some of 
his successors have done — the two Adamses, Jefferson, Mad- 
ison and Jackson. But Providence had disposed differently. 
Whilst visiting some of his farms in December, 1799, he 
was caught in a fall of snow and sleet, which caused infla- 
mation of the throat, for which skilful physicians could do 
nothings and on the 14th of that month he breathed his 
last. I well remember his death. I was then in Ken- 
tucky — and well remember, too, with what unmistakable 
manifestations of the profoundest grief the intelligence was 
received. At first the news was discredited, but "final 
hope became at last flat despair." Honors were paid to his 
memory, such as the times and circumstances could afford. 
There were no gorgeous trappings and gilded canopies or 
plumed hearses, or 'Svindy suspiration of forced breath," or 
the "trappings and the suits of woe," but there were suf- 
fused eyes and mourning hearts, and in the faces of the 
people it might be read, that the Father of his Country 
was no more. 

Whilst Washington was in the full enjoyment of the 
the kind of life he most loved— a rural .one and practical 
farming — he was prevailed upon by President Adams to 
accept the command of a provisional army to be raised to 
meet any contingency of foreign war or of domestic trou- 
bles. His rule having always been not to seek offices or to 
refuse them when he could serve his country, he accepted 
again the office of commander-in-chief, with the rank of 
Lieutenant-General ; but, fortunately for the country, it 
Was not necessary for him to take the field. Devoted to 
peace as he was, he thought, as Pliny did, that war might 
be necessary, and was neither to be feared nor provoked. 

When Kudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor of Ger- 



22 

many, in the thirteentli century, the electors gave as a rea- 
son for choosing him, that he was ^'just and good, and 
beloved of God and men" — -just the reason that those who 
elected Washington to the highest office within the gift of 
the people, might have assigned for their choice, five hun- 
dred years after it had been applied to another great man. 

Kobertson, the historian, said of the elder Pitt: ''The 
Secretary stood alone ; modern degeneracy had not reached 
him." It cannot be said that General "Washington "stood 
alone," seeing how numerous were the able and patriotic 
men who had acted with him in council and in the field, 
and whom he always regarded as his co-patriots and com- 
rades. But degeneracy had not reached him, and, secure 
in his invulnerable integrity, he was beyond its reach. 

Washington's Fareioell Address to his countrymen is a 
noble legacy. He cautions them against the baneful effect 
of the spirit of party generally ; tells them that one method 
of assault against the Constitution might be through alter- 
ations, which will impair the energy of the system. He 
warns against factions and factious men ; he exhorts us to 
cherish public credit as a source of strength and security ; 
to cultivate peace and harmony with all, — supposes that 
a nation's felicity is in ratio w-ith its virtue, but fears that 
national vices may be too strong. 

I need say no more about the Address. We all know its 
value and the wisdom that dictated it, as Avell as the love 
of country of him from whom it emanated. It is better 
understood, I fear, and more admired than it has been ob- 
served. 

There has lived no mortal, whose name is historical, that 
will be heard of in future, and in all future ages, oftener 
than General Washington's. In Europe and in South 
America his name is the greatest known. In the latter he 
is regarded as the great liberator — libertador — of the Korth, 
aiid they hold him in the highest veneration, although they 
cannot pronounce his name, Vasintone being the nearest 
they can come to it. In less than two hundred years, among 
three hundred millions of people of Anglo-Saxon origin. 



23 

hib! name will be a daily and a lioiisehold word. This must 
be so, and nothing but the will of God that it shall not be, 
can prevent it. Th(3 territory is here, the people are here, 
and will come. We have a free press, and free institutions 
that cannot be destroyed, even by armed despotism itself. 
We have the industry, the energy, the enterprise, the sci- 
ence and the ingenuity. Wars and rebellions, and dismem- 
berment even, cannot prevent this glorious consummation. 
Let none doubt. The population of the United States has 
doubled itself about three and a half times within about 
ninety years. Why then may it not double itself three 
times in two hundred years ? Statistical tables show that 
this may be done. Circumstances indicate that it will be 
done — Deofavente. 

In conclusion, I will remark, that it seems to me perti- 
nent to say that, looking recently over the records of the 
Washington National Monument Society, I observed a let- 
ter from the Secretary of the Villa Eica (Georgia) Masonic 
Lodge, recjuesting that some Monument engravings might 
be sent to him, which were supplied by John Carroll Brent, 
Secretary of the Monument Society. The Secretary of the 
Lodge, in his reply, returns thanks for the engravings^ and 
says that ''the sentiments of the letter from the Washington 
correspondent (Mr. Brent) meet a cordial response in their 
bosoms, and we earnestly trust that the good day is not far 
distant when we shall all meet as brothers of the same 
ftimily, never, no never, again to meet in deadly strife." 

It does not seem to me to be inappropriate now to repro- 
duce these sentiments for imitation and approval, for, al- 
though they are not per se of any very impressive moment, 
still, as a precursory sign and symptom, they may have no 
small significance and value. 



ADDRESS. 



I « t) j c r t : 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



For FotovxTai-:^' 3S, iser 



Col. J. C. PICKETT. 



WASHING TON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN T. BURCH. 
1867. 






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